Nicaragua’s ruling party hopes to expand in local elections

By GABRIELA SELSER
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — It’s been an electoral campaign without rallies, demonstrations or even real opposition. Now Nicaragua’s governing party is hoping to expand Sunday on the 141 of Nicaragua’s 153 municipalities that it already controls. President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front is approaching single-party status in Nicaragua. In the past two years, some opposition parties have been cancelled altogether and their candidates jailed. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has said that “the minimum conditions necessary” to hold free and fair elections don’t exist in the Central American nation.